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Monday, January 24, 2011

Reposts are
coming in of an explosion at Moscow’s Domodedovo airport. The number of
victims continues to rise. What the Russian goverment initially reported
as ten causalities, has now climbed to 23. Another 130 have been
reported injured.

The BBC reported that Russia’s Chief investigator has blamed
terrorists for the blast. Russia has experienced a string of deadly
attacks in recent years. There were many bombings in 2010, including the
Moscow Metro bombings which left 40 dead and over 100 injured.

Speculations abound, over the involvement of the Islamist insurgency
thriving in the North Caucasus. After the 2010 metro bombings Dokka
Umarov, one of the main leaders of the rebels, claimed responsibility
for the attack. He also threatened more attacks, unless Muslim states in
the North Caucasus receive independence.
A Briton on the scene told BBC news,

“We were walking out through the exit of the arrivals
hall towards the car, and there was this almighty explosion, a huge
bang, we didn’t know it was an explosion at the time, and my colleague
and I looked at each other and said ‘Christ that sounds like a car bomb
or something,’ because the noise was, literally, it shook you,”

Reuters news agency reported another eyewitness account,

The explosion was right near me, I was not hit but I felt
the shockwave; people were falling. Smoke started to gather – there
was a lot of smoke. Many of the injured went outside on their own in a
state of shock. Then they began to announce information about where to
exit.

The attack was supposedly carried out by a suicide bomber, and
unconfirmed reports say that Russian investigators have recovered the
head of the attacker.

It seems that world powers cannot avoid conflict with Islamic
insurgencies. Russia has the North Caucasus region, while China deals
with attacks hailing from the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region; America
travels the furthest for the fight. These numerous conflicts between
modern nation states and Islamic militants, points to a clash of world
views. One side sees itself as fighting the threat of terrorism, while
the other sees it actions as resistance against foreign imperialists.
Each side sees itself in the right. But on both sides civilians pay for
the ongoing conflict.

Police from the
east side of the city stop by in support of Detroit's Sixth Precinct
where a man entered in the early evening hours and opened fire wounding 3
officers including the Precinct Commander, Sunday, January 23, 2011.

(KATHLEEN GALLIGAN/Detroit Free Press)

Below is audio from the police station shooting today in Detroit. 4
Police Officers were shot, all of the officers are expected to survive
and were at Sinai Grace Hospital, according to Police Chief Ralph Godbee
Jr.

FirefighterDispatch uploaded the edited audio.FreeP.com:
It was just before 4:30 p.m. Sunday when the gunman came into the
police station and started shooting.
A female sergeant in a hallway was hit first. Commander Brian Davis
raced out of his office, exchanged fire with the gunman and got shot in
the back.

Al Jazeera and The Guardian are jointly publishing the summary of a
treasure trove of documents revealing the extraordinary extent to which
the PA was willing to sacrifice a huge chunk of the Palestinian national patrimony
and agenda for the sake of peace. While Israel (and to an extent, the
Bush administration) essentially said: “That’s nice. But not enough.”
This will literally knock your socks off. The documents (linked
below in discreet articles) reveal:

• The intimate level of covert co-operation between Israeli security
forces and the Palestinian Authority.

• The central role of British intelligence in drawing up a secret
plan to crush Hamas in the Palestinian
territories.

• How Palestinian Authority (PA) leaders were privately tipped off
about Israel’s 2008-9 war in Gaza.

As well as the annexation
of all East Jerusalem settlements except Har Homa, the Palestine
papers show PLO leaders privately suggested swapping part of the
flashpoint East Jerusalem Arab neighbourhood of Sheikh Jarrah for land
elsewhere.
Most controversially, they also proposed a joint committee to take
over the Haram al-Sharif/Temple Mount holy sites in Jerusalem’s Old City
– the neuralgic issue that helped sink the Camp David talks in 2000
after Yasser Arafat refused to concede sovereignty around the Dome of
the Rock and al-Aqsa mosques.
…The concession in May 2008 by Palestinian leaders [would have]
allow[ed] Israel to annex the settlements in East Jerusalem – including
Gilo…

You
sure don't, baby. But every other Palestinian and the world now will.

Palestinian negotiators practically bragged to the Israelis about how
much they were willing to give up for the sake of peace:

But nothing was enough for Israel. It apologetically said it
appreciated the Palestinian sacrifice but:

…The offer was rejected out of hand by Israel because it
did not include a big settlement near the city Ma’ale Adumim as well as
Har Homa and several others deeper in the West Bank, including Ariel.
“We do not like this suggestion because it does not meet our demands,”
Israel’s then foreign minister, Tzipi
Livni, told the Palestinians, “and probably it was not easy for
you to think about it, but I really appreciate it“.

Oh and you remember all that hope liberal Zionists (and even me I
confess) harbored that Tzipi Livni offered a pragmatic alternative to
Bibi and that SHE could and would negotiate a settlement if offered
power–all smashed to bits by revelations like this. Tzipi was no better
than Olmert nor Bibi. She just talked nicer and sounded more
reasonable.

Here is the overall summary of the tone of the documents by the
Guardian reporters:

The overall impression that emerges from the documents,
which stretch from 1999 to 2010, is of the weakness and growing
desperation of PA leaders as failure to reach agreement or even halt all
settlement temporarily undermines their credibility in relation to
their Hamas rivals; the papers also reveal the unyielding confidence of
Israeli negotiators and the often dismissive attitude of US politicians
towards Palestinian representatives.

So let’s try to assess the meaning of this bombshell. The PA is
toast and this former PLO representative says as much in this
Guardian column. Perhaps it will still retain support in the West
Bank, which is its base. But Fatah leaders were willing to give away
the store and get virtually nothing in return. What’s more, even the
huge amount it offered wasn’t enough. Israel wanted it all.

Israel had a partner all along. But it was the Palestinians who had
no partner. Israel’s motto: “Peace on our terms, or no terms.” Israel
acted as if it had won WWII and could dictate terms to the vanquished
foe. Olmert and Israelis may live to regret that they didn’t make peace
on these unbelievably generous terms.
In terms of Palestinian leadership, these papers prove the bankruptcy
of the notion that an unelected rump Palestinian entity can negotiate a
satisfactory deal on behalf of the Palestinian people. The Bush
administration and Israeli policy to torpedo the 2006 elections and
stand in the way of Hamas-Fatah reconciliation has been a disaster. The
only way to find an accomodation acceptable to the majority of
Palestinians is with a representative elected body that ratifies such
negotiation results.

If Abbas and his cronies had any honor they’d resign en masse and
leave Israel to resume full Occupation of the West Bank (or barring that
negotiate a real resolution with real Palestinian leaders). But the
current PA leaders are as survival oriented as Bibi. They show no
devotion to Palestinian national ideals just as Bibi et al show little
commitment to anything resembling values or principles. They just want
to keep their fingers in the pie. For Palestinians an increasingly
small, miserly one. For Israelis an increasingly larger and tastier
one.
And can you believe that Israel had the temerity to ask the PA to
accept forced transfer of Israeli Palestinian citizens to the new
Palestinian state, Avigdor Lieberman’s population transfer (aka
expulsion) agenda?
The documents are a boon for Hamas, which has always prided itself on
steadfastness to the Palestinian national agenda. Hamas will appear
the only Palestinian movement which hasn’t compromised with Israel, the
only one which wasn’t willing to sell its people out for a mess of
porridge. Even if you hate Hamas, you will have to admit it comes out
of this smelling like a rose. And who do we have to blame for this?
Bush and Olmert, no one else.

Olmert is shown to be a total liar when he trumpeted claims that he
made the Palestinians a generous
offer of 92% of Palestine, which they refused. Actually, it was
Olmert who couldn’t or wouldn’t deliver.

The new development augurs poorly for any serious peace efforts by
the Obama administration. You now have an even more intransigent
Israeli government in power than the one to which all these concessions
were offered. And you have a PA which will be mortified that it was
exposed with its pants down. Peace talks are dead. Dead as a doornail.
Bibi wins big time. He can now go about building, occupying,
assassinating and engaging in war with virtually any party he wishes as
long as he wishes. He holds the cards. The PA and Obama got bupkis.
And how will the other Arab governments in the Middle East react to
American diplomacy used so haphazardly and to such little effect?

But perhaps, just perhaps not all is lost. There are initiatives
that will be strengthened by this failure. All the alternative
peacemaking efforts such as BDS will look even more attractive than ever
since they are not tarnished by politicians’ dithering and compromises.
But even more important, I think the idea of an imposed settlement
looks not only feasible, but perhaps the only hope. I can foresee the
Quartet, EU and UN Security Council devising a settlement with the
input, but not veto power, of the parties and imposing it on them along
with provisions that offer security to both sides. It’s becoming
clearer and clearer that this is not an option, but rather a necessity.
The last hope.

For those who like inside baseball, who spilled the beans? Who
leaked these documents? My money says it was one of the members of the Palestinian negotiation support unit (NSU), a
special British-funded entity that provided research, analysis and
strategic background for the Palestinian side in its negotiations with
Israel. The Guardian says that many members of this unit have quit,
growing disaffected by the sheer magnitude of what their bosses were
willing to concede while getting little or nothing in return. One of
these individuals would have a strong motive to embarrass the PA
negotiators. Also, it appears that the bifurcated nature of the NSU
(working for the PA but funded by Britain) allowed for mixed allegiances
not necessarily fully committed to the PA interests.

In effect, the Guardian may’ve inadvertently blown the cover of the
leaker with this statement:

The bulk of the documents are records, contemporaneous
notes and sections of verbatim transcripts of meetings drawn up by
officials of the Palestinian negotiation support unit (NSU), which has
been the main technical and legal backup for the Palestinian side in the
negotiations.

Economist's
View: SOTU: Obama's Focus on Jobs: This is a year too late, more
than that actually, but President Obama's intent to focus on jobs in the
State of the Union address is welcome. The abandonment of the
recommendations of the bipartisan majority on the debt-reduction
commission -- for now anyway -- is also good news. This committee
appeared to have Social Security in its sights mostly for ideological
reasons rather than as something that would make a meaningful dent in
the budget problem...

What puzzles me is what a "focus on jobs" means. At one level, it
means neoliberal Democratic business as usual: most of our policies are,
after all, aimed at raising the productivity of and the demand for
labor. But "focus on jobs" implies policies that the executive branch
can do on its own or persuade congress to pass that will have a large
bang, and it is not clear to me what the White House thinks those are.

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (AP) — Authorities say two Florida police
officers were fatally shot while trying to arrest a suspect hiding in an
attic.

St. Petersburg Chief Chuck Harmon confirmed the deaths
Monday. He says a U.S. marshal also was wounded and is being treated at a
hospital. He says the suspect remains barricaded inside the house where
the shooting happened.

The marshal and officers had come to
arrest the suspect on aggravated battery charges.
Police had to
use a vehicle punch a hole in the wall to pull out one of the officers.

The
shooting comes four days after two Miami-Dade County detectives were
killed by a murder suspect they were trying to arrest. That suspect was
killed by another detective. Their funeral is Monday.

A
reported suicide
bombing at Moscow's Domodedovo airport today has killed dozens and
left more than 100 injured.

Russian news agencies, citing witnesses, said airport halls were
filled with smoke, so much so that it was difficult to count the number
of dead. International arrivals were being diverted to nearby, according
to local media reports. The explosion occurred at 4:32 p.m. local time,
according to RT television. The airport, southeast of the capital, is
Russia’s largest hub for international travelers, with more than 20
million passengers passing through last year.

CNN
is currently reporting the death toll at 31. The bomb is said to have
gone off in the international arrivals baggage claim area, which is
unsecured.

Nearly
70 years had passed since the N.F.L.'s oldest rivals played each other
in a postseason game. In 1941, George Halas roamed the sideline for the
Chicago Bears. Vince Lombardi was nearly two decades from coaching the
Green Bay Packers to a series of championships, including the first two
Super Bowls.

B. J. Raji (90) returned an interception for a
score to provide the winning margin in Green Bay's 21-14 win over
Chicago. Pages D6-7.

On Sunday night,
when the relieved and exhausted Packers returned to the visitors' locker
room deep under the southern end of Soldier Field, they celebrated
around the George S. Halas Trophy. That piece of shiny hardware, given
to the champions of the National Football Conference, was soon
shepherded away. There is a bigger prize to capture.

Green
Bay's 21-14 victory over the Bears, its third straight road victory
of the playoffs, sends the Packers to Super Bowl XLV against the
Pittsburgh Steelers on Feb. 6. They are searching for their 13th N.F.L.
championship, and first in 14 years.

"We always
felt we were a very good football team," Green Bay Coach Mike McCarthy
said. "Now we have an opportunity to achieve greatness. That's winning
the Super Bowl down in Dallas and bringing the Lombardi Trophy back
home."

The Packers shot to a 14-0 lead early in
the second quarter and never trailed, but found themselves scrambling
to hold on as darkness descended in the fourth quarter. Jay Cutler,
Chicago's starting quarterback, was ineffective before he left the game
early in the third quarter with a knee injury. The backup Todd Collins
was no better, completing none of his four passes.

The
Bears, with zero points and little hope, turned to the third-stringer
Caleb Hanie.

He had thrown 14 passes in his
three N.F.L. seasons. But he rallied the team like Sid Luckman, the Hall
of Fame quarterback who led Chicago to that playoff victory over the
Packers in 1941, sparking the Bears to their only two touchdown drives.

Hanie
sandwiched those scores around one of his two mistakes -- a short pass
into the arms of Green Bay's B. J. Raji, a 337-pound defensive tackle
who rumbled 18 yards for what proved the clinching touchdown.

With
47 seconds left and the tying touchdown in reach, on fourth-and-5 at
Green Bay's 29, Hanie was intercepted by cornerback Sam Shields at the
12.

One snap later, the Packers (13-6) kneeled
to run out the clock and became the second No. 6 seed to reach the Super
Bowl, after the 2005 Steelers. They have won three Super Bowls but lost
their last time there, at the end of the 1997 season.

Green
Bay's Aaron Rodgers completed 17 of 30 passes for 244 yards and was
intercepted twice. He led the Packers to touchdowns on their first
possession and again early in the second quarter.

Still,
Green Bay's 14-0 lead seemed frozen in the 20-degree temperatures for
much of the afternoon.

Throughout this season, the
Jets reinforced their status as the most talkative team in football, a
boastful bunch who, with a series of last-second victories, backed up
their big talk.

Rashard Mendenhall rumbled through the Jets
for 121 yards on 27 carries. The Steelers took a 24-0 lead, then held
off a second-half rally by the Jets to earn their third Super Bowl trip
in six years.

But Sunday, the loudest team in football shuffled around its locker
room in silence, stunned, still processing a second straight Jets
season that reached the doorstep of the Super Bowl and ended there.

The
Pittsburgh Steelers had managed to complete what for most of this
season seemed impossible, had pushed the mute button on the Jets with a
24-19 triumph in the American Football Conference championship game. The
Jets trudged home, out of words. The Steelers will face the Green Bay
Packers in the Super Bowl on Feb. 6.

"I don't
even feel like the bridesmaid," linebacker Bart Scott said. "We're more
like the flower girl, I guess. We can't get past that last hurdle. It
hurts."

As Coach Rex Ryan stepped behind the
lectern for his postgame news conference, his expression -- red-faced
and teary-eyed -- said what the Jets struggled to convey.

The
Steelers will play for their second Super Bowl title in three years and
their third since the 2005 season. The Jets tacked another year onto
their own championship drought. Three times since 1998 they have
advanced to the game before the Super Bowl, which they last won after
the 1968 season. Three times their season has ended there, just as it
did Sunday night.

This year, the Jets had
insisted with increased frequency, felt different, was different. They
had not sneaked into the playoffs, as they did a year ago. They had
avenged previous grievances throughout January, beating the team that
finished their 2009 season (Indianapolis) and their most bitter rival
(New England).

On Sunday, the players said Ryan
addressed them with tears in his eyes. He told them he was proud of
them, told them they should be proud, too. His words, at least Sunday,
gave them little solace.

Several Jets said they
did not plan to watch the Super Bowl, not after another season in which
they came within the space between thumb and forefinger -- this close
-- from their stated goal.

"You know you have
the tools," offensive tackle D'Brickashaw Ferguson said. "You know you
have the talent and the team. You can say a lot of good things about us,
about our season, but at the end of the day, we lost."

For more than 80 years, the Miss
America Pageant was synonymous with Atlantic City, but in 2006, the annual
event moved to Las Vegas, where it took place again this year.

How ironic that Atlantic City, the
East Coast’s answer to Las Vegas, has lost one of its oldest attractions and
sources of identity to what once was its only domestic competitor for casino
gambling dollars. Even for those of us who love the Garden State, it is another
sign that New Jersey is destined to be a second-class state.

As far back as 1876, Benjamin
Franklin described New Jersey as “a beer barrel, tapped at both ends, with all
the live beer running into Philadelphia and New York.” Over a century later, we
are a state of 8.7 million people, yet we have no major television station of
our own, so we must rely on network affiliates from New York and Philadelphia.

New York, and to a lesser extent
Philadelphia, are the standards by which we judge quality. How many New Jersey
businesses use descriptions such as Broadway-quality theater, New York-style
pizza and authentic Philly cheese steaks to attract customers? There’s also the
matter of the two “New York” NFL teams, both of which have played their home
games in New Jersey for over 25 years. Likewise, most of the stars of MTV’s
popular Jersey Shore television show do not even hail from the Garden
State.

In Bruce Springsteen and the E
Street Band, we have one of the entertainment industry’s biggest attractions.
Yet, at Governor Chris Christie's inaugural ball, he had to settle for a
Springsteen tribute group called “The B Street Band” because the new Governor
and his supporters were unsuccessful in their attempts to get the real Boss to
perform.

And when Teresa Scanlan of Nebraska
was crowned Miss America on live national television last Saturday, the event
once again took place outside of New Jersey (even though the Miss America
Organization is headquartered here in Linwood).

As for me, I’ve had two brushes
with the pageant in my career. In 1978, my wife’s cousin, Paula Pope, was Miss
New York. At the time, I was a young reporter with The Montclair Times,
so I obtained press credentials to cover the pageant, hoping to impress all of
the relatives who were traveling from New York for the contest. As it turned
out, my “press seats” were a few rows behind all of theirs and they graciously
made room for me, so I could sit a little closer.

Paula did not win. The crown went
to Susan Perkins, Miss Ohio, instead.

A few years later, I had my second
encounter with the pageant when I was working for The Aquarian Weekly,
a New Jersey music and entertainment publication. Although most of my time was
spent interviewing the likes of the Grateful Dead, Pat Benatar and Phil
Collins, a publicist friend of mine asked if I would write a story about the
current Miss New Jersey, Suzette Charles, who was a singer. In keeping with New
Jersey’s stature, she had finished second in the pageant for Miss America 1984.
I agreed to do the interview; she and I had a nice conversation, and I wrote a
short piece about Suzette for The Aquarian.

Several months later, the reigning
Miss America, Vanessa Williams, resigned amidst a controversy over nude photos
that were taken of her before the pageant. As the first runner-up, Suzette
Charles became the new Miss America. But again New Jersey was short-changed.
Because Williams resigned ten months after winning the crown, New Jersey’s
Suzette Charles’ reign as Miss America lasted only seven weeks.

# #
#

Richard A. Lee is
Communications Director of the Hall
Institute. A former State House reporter and Deputy Communications
Director for the Governor, he also teaches courses in media, politics and
government at Rutgers University, where he is completing work on a Ph.D. in
media studies. Read more of Rich’s columns at richleeonline and
follow him on Twitter.

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